Iranian National Arrested at LAX For Brokering Arms Deal for Iranian Regime

AP Photo/Chris Carlson

The city of Los Angeles is so deep into the anti-gun state of California that the nearest border to the city is Mexico. They have embraced gun control laws and constantly demand more. Despite all of that, not only does it seem that garden-variety gun control doesn't work, but an arrest at LAX kind of shows us that the rules around international arms sales don't seem to be doing all that much, either.

Advertisement

We all know that in California, they raise a stink if you want to print firearms components on the 3D printer you lawfully purchased, even if you're perfectly legal to own a firearm in the Golden State. You simply can't do it without some kind of "mother, may I?" permission.

But an Iranian national--one the AP calls a "Los Angeles woman," by the way--was arrested for brokering arms deals on behalf of her native homeland.

Federal prosecutors said a 44-year-old Los Angeles woman was arrested Saturday night at Los Angeles International Airport on suspicion of helping Iran traffic weapons to Sudan, which is in its fourth year of a bloody civil war.

Shamim Mafi will face charges that she brokered the sale of “drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition” between Iran and the Sudanese Armed Forces, First U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Sunday on social media.

...

Mafi is an Iranian national who became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2016, Essayli said.

A criminal complaint dated March 12 alleges that Mafi and an unnamed co-conspirator operated a company in Oman called Atlas International Business through which weapons and ammunition were trafficked. The company received over $7 million in payments in 2025.

Now, Iran is not run by nice people.

Sudan, also, is not run by nice people. 

These are two very bad regimes that wanted to conduct a weapons deal. I have no idea why they needed an intermediary, other than the fact that no one in charge of anything about their equivalent of the PTA is willing to stick their head above ground, even with a ceasefire going, but they allegedly went to Mafi to facilitate the deal.

Advertisement

And she did all of that from inside the city of Los Angeles.

Where, again, they want you to go through a background check for a box of 50 rounds of ammo, and this woman was allegedly helping sell millions of rounds to a tyrannical regime, to say nothing of drones and explosives.

You know, the stuff we can't be trusted with unless we beg Uncle Sam for the correct licenses.

Now, in fairness, this is a little different than Paco buying a gun at a gun store in Texas, then selling it to his cousin in LA. This is a lot higher scale, and the local cops are probably ill-equipped to know what's going on at that level. No slam on them for that, just to be clear. This isn't their wheelhouse.

I just can't get over the absolute irony of this happening in such an anti-gun city, where they're worried about what someone like you and I might do, while the terrorist regime in Iran is conducting arms deals with a military dictatorship in Sudan.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Sponsored